FIG. 1 illustrates a conventional way of displaying biometric information 10 from a biometric sensor via a display 11 of a mobile electronic device 12, such as a smartphone, that is in communication with the biometric sensor. The biometric sensor that generates the data displayed in FIG. 1 is a blood pressure sensor that sends blood pressure information 12 and heart rate information 14 to an application (or “mobile app”) running on the mobile electronic device for display. However, currently there is no mechanism by which a person can judge the accuracy of the displayed sensor information 10.
For example, if the mobile app connects with a first blood pressure sensor on one day and then connects with a second, different blood pressure sensor the another day, the person may get the same blood pressure readings from each blood pressure sensor. However, each blood pressure sensor may have a different accuracy, precision and probability distribution. For example, the first blood pressure sensor may have a standard deviation (σ) of 6 and the second blood pressure sensor may have a standard deviation (σ) of 9. Thus, even if the readings of both blood pressure sensors are the same, the person may not be able to trust the readings of the second sensor as much as those of the first sensor. To complicate matters further, the difference in accuracy or precision between the first and second blood pressure sensors may further depend on not just the sensor differences themselves, but also on static (or quasi-static) biometric data from the person being monitored, such as age, ethnicity, height, weight, gender, medication usage, health status, etc.
Moreover, when a mobile app is used to make a medical assessment or to plan an intervention or therapy, such as recommending a medical screening or suggesting blood pressure medication, there may be no good way to assess the probability of false alarms. Because the precision of each sensor may be different, the false positives, false negatives, true positives and true negatives in making a health assessment (such as a hypertension assessment, cardiovascular assessment, or the like) may be different for each sensor.
Thus, there is increased concern in the medical community as standards for wireless sensors, such as BLE (Bluetooth Low energy) standards, enable any biometric sensor to send biometric information because currently all sensors are mistakenly presumed to have equal statistical characteristics when making a medical assessment via a mobile application.